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The second conference on developments in Faecal Sludge Management is just around the corner in Durban. We are pleased to share with you the conference themes and to highlight a number of our keynote speakers and paper submissions.

Programme

The excellent response to the call for papers has resulted in a programme featuring speakers from around the globe, confirming that there is much experience and knowledge to be shared in this critical area. The second international Faecal Sludge Management conference will include presentations that fall into the following themes:

On-site Sanitation as a Business

Socio-political Aspects of On-site Sanitation

Toilet Design for FSM Optimisation

Pit Emptying – What are the Options?

The How of Faecal Sludge Treatment

Waste Not Want Not – Beneficial Use of Faecal Sludges Technology and Innovation

Health Aspects of Faecal Sludges

FSM2 will pick up where FSM 1 (held in Durban in March 2011) left off – with a commitment to capturing and sharing developments in the management and beneficiation of faecal sludges (including urine). This year the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has committed to showcase and present developments in up to 40 of their Sanitation Grand Challenge Projects. For more information on FSM 1 see “What happens when the pit is full?” at http://www.afrisan.org

Presenters

Presenters at FSM2 will share experiences from countries around the world including Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Chile, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nepal, Sweden, South Africa, the USA, the United Kingdom, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The line-up of keynote speakers includes:

FSM research overview of Sandec (Water and Sanitation in Developing Countries). EAWAG (The Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) is a leader in the FSM field, and manages research projects around the world. The organisation is currently compiling a book on the subject of Faecal Sludge Management.

Steve Sugden – Research Manager, Water for People and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
will look at Sanitation as a Business, drawing on his experiences with the development and transfer of the Gulper technology into commercial businesses – giving valuable insight into the process of taking a technology from concept into the marketplace.

There will 9 presentations in plenary sessions, 90 presentations in parallel sessions and a closing panel discussion. The speakers and the topics cover a wide range of interest and represent work from all over the globe. The detailed draft programme for the conference can be downloaded from www.pid.co.za .

http://www.qdrum.co.za/
Water is essential to the survival of all forms of life and a clean and accessible supply is a basic need that millions of people around the world do not have. In disadvantaged and rural communities, the trouble of fetching water invariably over long distances by cumbersome and far too often, unhygienic means is all too evident.

The Q Drum is the simple, durable, effective and user-friendly solution to this problem. A device designed to ease the physical burden and reduce the time spent collecting water; thus ultimately improving the lives and well-being of countless people around the world.

Directed/Produced by Aaron Straight, Senior Producer- Kim Lawrence, DP – Ian Jay, DPII – Guido Ronge, Edited by Miles Lippold/Doug Lyons/Todd Mueller, Executive Producer-Mark Dickison, Music composition by David Schommer. Many Thanks to the woman of the Nama Village in Steinkoft, South Africa. For more information, please go to http://www.trifilm.com

The separate collection of urine provides innovative opportunities for the improvement of sanitation and the recycling of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Urine separation is an excellent sanitation solution, particularly in places where classic sewer-based sanitation is not sustainable. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is providing a grant of 3.0 million US dollars to support a joint project by the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) and the eThekwini Water and Sanitation utility (EWS) in South Africa to continue developing practical, community-scale nutrient recovery systems.

The project, covering a period of four years, focuses on the further development of technical solutions for urine processing for nutrient recovery. In addition, project participants, together with experts from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, will study the logistics of collection and transport of urine from toilets to processing facilities. The Swiss aquatic research scientists and their partners in South Africa will also examine ways in which sanitation can be paid for by the production and sale of urine-based fertiliser, thus enabling a cheap, efficient and widely-accepted sanitation system to be set up.

Alternatives are urgently needed

There is a growing awareness that in many parts of the world an alternative is needed for the conventional sewer-based sanitation and central wastewater treatment system – if only for the reason that not enough water is available for drinking, let alone to be used for flushing. There is a pressing need to reduce the number of people with no access to basic sanitary facilities and safe drinking water, as required by the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As well as endangering people’s health, inadequate disposal of faecal material poses a risk to the drinking water supply and contaminates the natural environment. Last but not least, the global demand for fertiliser is so great that interest in local sources of nutrients is growing.

Successful preparatory work in Nepal

Eawag has many years of experience in the research of urine separation, also known as NoMix technology, and in 2007 completed the transdisciplinary Novaquatis project. Since then, Eawag’s project in Siddhipur near Kathmandu, Nepal, has demonstrated that urine processed to make the phosphorus-based fertiliser struvite can help to close regional nutrient cycles and promote awareness of the value of the nutrients contained in urine. Farmers participating in the scheme also benefit since they do not need to buy as much imported chemical fertiliser (www.eawag.ch/stun). «This experience plus the collaboration with an extremely progressive administrative department in Durban were important reasons for developing our project in South Africa for the next four years», says process engineer Kai Udert, who is the Eawag researcher in charge of the South Africa project.

Collaboration with an innovative water authority

Eawag can count on a forward-looking partner in the South African eThekwini region around Durban, since they have already carried out important pioneering work in the field of sanitation. EWS has been promoting urine-diverting dry toilets since 2002 and there are already around 90,000 such toilets in use. However, urine is simply soaked into the ground, which could create new problems in the longer term. A simple, combined system for nutrient recycling from urine will be developed . This will reduce the costs of sanitation, prevent pollution of water resources and produce fertiliser for the local market. «That’s a completely new way of thinking and not just a small step on an already well-trodden path», says Kai Udert.

This was first noted/posted by SuSanA( ENFRES ) and worthy of “post duplicating”

GTZ Has published a set of technology reviews the last Quarter of 2009 dealing with “some technologies commonly used as toilets or as treatment systems in ecosan systems.”

GTZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit translated- German Agency for Technical Cooperation) is federally owned and “…supports the German Government in achieving its development-policy objectives.” according to its about us web page Thier focus is sustainable development. Their is site is available in English and Deutsche de

Technology Review 1: Urine diversion components

Overview of urine diversion components such as waterless urinals, urine diversion toilets, urine storage and reuse systemsVersion of 6 December 2009.Hard copies are available on request. This was updated in 2011

NOTES:

They, GTZ, suggests the site http://www.susana.org/lang-en/working-groups for in depth information. SuSanA (Sustainable Sanitation Alliance) has formed working groups for a range topics centered on sanitation. Their admirable and hopefully achievable goal is to “…provide deliverables that underline the problems and opportunities …” for these topics. The working groups break out as follows: